Should the NHS be ditched?
It may be time to put Britain's beloved sacred cow out of its misery. Others disagree
Britain’s National Health Service is the country’s most beloved sacred cow. It is, however, on its last legs. Although successive governments have poured more and more money into it, its performance gets steadily worse. Yet no government will contemplate ditching it for another health care system; the very suggestion is considered politically unthinkable.
But not by me! In July, I wrote here (£) in The Times of London that the refusal to acknowledge reality has produced initiative after initiative that has not only failed to reform the NHS but has made its plight even worse. I suggested that a better alternative was a European-style social insurance health system. This would safeguard the NHS’s core principle of health care for all free at the point of use while delivering patient leverage, faster treatment and higher standards of care.
Prospect magazine has now picked up that gauntlet and run a cover story about the German health care system by Alexander Menden, a journalist for the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung who now supports the NHS model. I took part in a podcast with Alexander and Sally Warren, director of policy at the King's Fund and who opposes any change to another system. You can listen to the podcast here.
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